Another Sort of Learning
Selected Contrary Essays on How Finally to Acquire an Education While Still in College or Anywhere Else: Containing Some Belated Advise about How to Employ Your Leisure Time When Ultimate Questions Remain Perplexing in Spite of Your Highest Earned Academic Degree, Together with Sundry Book Lists Nowhere Else in Captivity to Be Found

"James V. Schall has written a delightfully odd book about books, because he believes that (1) to be educated is to confront the great questions about what is; that (2) many modern students, in or out of school, never learn to raise, much less answer, the great questions, thus are uneducated in the deepest sense; and that (3) great books, past and present, which wrestle deeply yet non-technically with these questions rather than passively mirroring popular culture with its myopia and prejudices, can fill this vacuum for anyone, in or out of school. It contains unusually sane reflections on education, unusually reflective reviews of books, and unusually discriminating booklists. Just the book I have wanted to give my students for years."
- Peter Kreeft, Boston College

"For years I have meant to write such a book as Another Sort of Learning, suggesting how the rising generation might acquire some measure of wisdom despite the intellectual vices or indifferences of the Academy; but I am happy that Schall has forestalled me. It is full of much valuable wisdom."
- Russell Kirk, Author, The Conservative Mind

"Few teachers can match Fr. Schall at conveying a sense of the life of the mind, few would have the audacity to write about `what a student owes his teacher', or the charm to carry it off, or the wisdom to make it memorable. He never forgets that `to learn' is a transitive verb, and that its object is truth."
- Joseph Sobran, Editor, National Review

"This is a book for those who like to read and to think--about ultimate questions of existence and essence, `about time and learning, about humor and wonder'. It is chock-full of ideas about reason, faith, doubt, truth, evil and good."
- John H. Bunzel, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

"Fr. Schall's observations about the American scene in general and education in particular are, as usual, wise and perceptive. He cuts against the grain in exactly the places where this needs to be done."
- Dr. James Hitchcock, St. Louis University

Fr. James Schall, S.J., is a professor of Political Philosophy at Georgetown University, and the author of some 15 books in the areas of social issues, spirituality and literature.

Table of Contents:

Part I: So You're Still Perplexed Even in College?
Another Sort of Learning
Why Read?
What a Student Owes His Teacher
Grades
On Teaching the Important Things
On Teaching the Political Thought of Plato

Part II: Books You Will Never Be Assigned
Straining for the Highest Things
The Supernatural Destiny of Man
On Doctrine and Dignity: From "Heretics" to "Orthodoxy"
On Evil and the Responsibility for Suffering
The Obscure Heart of Ideology
The Morality of Immortal Men
Oddness and Sanity

Part III: Have You Thought About It This Way?
The Recovery of Permanent Things
What Is a Lecture?
On Devotion
On Prayer and Fasting for Bureaucrats
On the Seriousness of Sports
On the Difficulty of Believing and Not Believing
The Humanities and the "Basic of Excellence"
On Spiritual and Intellectual Life